


The Time Is Past

by A_Queer_In_Spaceland



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cameo from Slipstream because I love her, Canon Compliant to a Degree, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hot Rod is Adorable, I miss use my Univeristy education in Shakespeare, I took canon and dug deeper and ignored the fact I was carving into the foundations, Implied sexual content but the mature warning is really just for the mental illness, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, Recovery, The Matrix of Leadership SUCKS, We call War a Horror for a reason lads, okay it is fluff but like in the second half, sparkling!Hot Rod, the major character death tag is just for Megatron i don't kill anyone else, this isn't a dark fic but it isn't fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 15:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20695523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Queer_In_Spaceland/pseuds/A_Queer_In_Spaceland
Summary: When the final blow is struck, and Megatron finally defeated, the Matrix leaves Optimus Prime. With the Matrix in the Well of Allsparks, Orion Pax -archivist and doting partner of Megatronus of Kaon - wakes up after thousands of years with energon on his servos and the love of his life fading away in front of him.That's a fucked up thing to go through - here's 6000 words about if you can even move on from that. (Hint: You Can, but maybe with a little help)





	1. The Beginning of the End

“Megatronus?”

The voice that left the Prime’s mouth was small and broken, so unlike the tenor of their leader that had they not heard it from his mouth the assembled Autobot’s wouldn’t have believed he’d said it. They were right to doubt. Optimus Prime had not uttered that confused and horrified question.

In a flash of light that had encompassed the warring faction leaders as the fatal blow was finally struck all remnants of Optimus Prime had been washed away. The matrix returning to its place deep within the well and leaving only the foundations of the their great Prime. It was not Optimus Prime who fell to his knees beside the fading spark of Cybertron’s destroyer, but Orion Pax.

“Megatronus!”

Optic fluid blurred the warlord’s vision, pain making his processor slow, yet Megatron managed to bring a weak servo to his lover’s face. A small smile, barely more than an uptick of his pained grimace and a smudge of energon on a shaking archivist’s cheek was the last act of a mech who had with less effort wiped out planets.

With a pained keen Orion clutched Megatron’s servo back to his cheek from where it had fallen. It was wrong. A dissonant sight. The steadfast will of this spark had once demanded change and then burned everything down when denied. It couldn’t simply gutter out. Orion repeated his name in a mournful chant, as if it would summon him from the well of Allsparks.

It didn’t.

It wouldn’t.

He was alone.

“Optimus?”

Orion didn’t realise they were talking to him at first. Grief, sharp, cold and so solid it was crushing his own spark melted into anger, like crystal energon refined into liquid and twice as explosive.

“Who did this?” The archivist snarled, finally -after centuries- understanding how Megatronus could rage so brightly. It had always stuck him as incomprehensible from the dark of his archives. Yes he felt outrage, that fierce need to change things had driven him stuttering and sure to Megatronus’s door in the first place. But that anger, furious rage that boiled so clearly in his lover’s lines had never been anything other than confusing.

“Optimus?” The same voice asked. It was mellow and old but cut with worry.

Worry for this Optimus apparently.

Orion should have cared. “Over-active compassion coding, it’ll be your downfall Orion,” Megatronus had once said.

Orion didn’t care, he cradled Megatronus instead. The old mech called for “Optimus,” again. Orion snarled and looked up. He blinked. They were in the Sea of Rust. But that was a full decavorn of travel from the Senate- what had happened? How?

“Optimus.”

“Who is Optimus?” Orion bit back. A white and red servo tried to touch his shoulder plating- when had he gotten armour? He could feel himself now. Bulkier, the same size as Megatronus himself.

“You are?” it said. Orion heard the mech retreat a step.

And like that, the placement of Megatronus in his arms -the way the Gladiator had slumped into him before they both met the ground, where his servos where, why they were tacky- it all made sense.

He looked at his servos. The pale blue splashed vividly and violently with energon, congealed form the air but still fresh.

The name hadn’t been just a question. But an answer to his.

He had done this.

It was his blade that had smashed through his Megatronus’s spark chamber.

He had let that light drain out.

Orion had never held a blade before, yet here was one stained energon blue slippery in his grip. In hands too big, too unfamiliar yet painfully his.

With a shuddering gasp Orion folded Megatronus’s arms over his chest, hiding the gaping wound.

“Orion-,” The mech tried. He finally got a look at him as Orion cast a glare backwards. Optics fire bright in anguish but also something else, something darker. The mech was burnt orange, much like the sands they stood on, and white. A medic of some sort. It mattered little. It hadn’t mattered when the light that would have ignited a fire in the Senate had been flickering, it certainly didn’t matter now that it was extinguished. What good was a medic to him now?

“Do not talk to me.”

Surprised optics turned to him, Autobot and Decepticon alike, although he didn’t know the distinction. Orion didn’t miss the pain, the loss that shined out of the medic when he spoke again.

“I do not care who you are, who you think I am. I want you to leave.”

Good that the medic should feel some sliver of the torment that was tearing at his spark chamber, begging for him to follow his love. They didn’t at first. But when it became obvious that Orion was simply going to stay there, knelt, fixated on the grey shell, they obeyed. Perhaps it was residual respect. Or simply discomfort at the emotionalism painted as plainly as Megatron’s energon on the former-Prime’s face.

-

It’s not even a half a decavorn before the useless medic returns. He carries with him energon, enough for two. As if he expects to stay for a chat. Or thinks Megatron will rise again -it’s happened before. But no. Unicron and Primus both have abandoned their avatars, leaving little more than husks and haunted frames.

Ratchet placed the fuel nearby his former leader’s silent vigil, before turning away. He knows when he is not wanted, and the blasts of scathing derision whirling from the kneeling mech is a violent message, but a clear one. Leave.

So he does.

Until the next time he comes by to bring energon. And the next. And the next.

There’s a considerable stack by the time he grows impatient with his lost commander. Like a tower with crumbling foundations Ratchet’s emotions reach their breaking point and all his constructed control comes crashing down.

“Opt- Orion, listen to me. I know he was your friend, but this has got to stop, you’ll starve!”

For a long moment there was only the sound of wind howling over the planes, kicking up fine grains of metal, and depositing them somewhere else. Orion wondered how long it would take for his frame to become nothing more than grains in the wind. Not too much longer if the pox-marks on his outer layers were any indication. Good. Let the sand wear away this new body.

“We we’re not friends, do no seek to know me or my pain.” The words were heated but held no malice. Orion was far too tired, too resigned for that. Venom was for the angry. There was no snarling turbofox in his sparkchamber, just a void where a light had once touched. Perhaps he was the one who had offlined? But no, the gnawing in his tanks spoke to the functionality of his frame.

A quiet voice played him some of his favourite literature, Megatronus’s warm tenor reading to him poetry of his own devising and tomes the archivist didn’t remember ever learning. His sub-routines chose one of those unfamiliar texts to drown out the Medic.

_“Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew,” _Megatronus’s voice intoned, the passage clunky in the Cybertronian it had been translated into, from what he couldn’t tell but it had almost organic connotations. Still, he found it apt.

_“…how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world,” _Came the voice, overlaying the Medic’s broken pleas for him to return home. _Fie_ to quote the work Megatronus recited, home was gone. His only home had been within the circle of now empty arms. No, he would not go home. Not yet, he was waiting.

Orion wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. If his internal diagnostics had speech they would have scornfully said it was death. The quiet rumble of Megatronus said it was for something bigger. Orion had never gone awry in trusting his love before, why start now?

So, he waited.

The Medic left.

Megatronus lulled him into recharge with his words.

-

When Orion awoke it was not to the soft crooning of his memory files given too much freedom, or the cries of the Rust Sea, but to silence. A soft beeping made itself known as his olfactory sensors detected the sharp scent of medical-grade. 

It appeared the Medic was opportunistic. Megatronus would have raged at the dishonour in taking a mech while he was helpless. Orion simply accepted it. He was so tired, and his frame hurt. Pain splintering from his spark and radiating outward. It appeared going out of starvation mode had silenced his welcome hallucination and brought the aching longing, and the physical aching to the forefront of his perception.

A hiccupping sob burst past his lips. Curled into himself Orion sobbed until his frame shook, until no more tears came, until exhausted he was overtaken by recharge once more.

-

The next time Orion wakes it’s to the Medic.

“You should have left me.”

Ratchet started at the voice, then at the words.

“I don’t deserve the metal this is stamped on if I had of,” He replied, gesturing to his Autobot brand. In another time Orion would have been curious about the strange symbol. It wasn’t another time. He stayed silent as the Medic finished his notes and left. He seemed to want to say more, something heavy on his processor. Orion didn’t care enough to ask.

Orion flexed his servos. The extra weight was gone, armour stripped off his body to leave only what was originally there. Orion couldn’t find it in himself to have an opinion about the change.

-

Hot Rod was not supposed to be here. Ratchet had expressly forbidden him from going into the medbay, especially the cordoned off area everyone kept looking at and talking about when they thought he wasn’t listening. But he was listening, so he knew in that room sat Optimus Prime. Legendary hero, restorer of Cybertron, slayer of Megatron. His sparkling-sized frame trembled with excitement as he crept into the room in the dead of the recharge cycle.

“You’re not very big.” Was the first thing out of his mouth once he locked optics with the supposed war hero.

“Neither are you,” Came the retort. He was slow to answer as if considering his words, or just considering voicing them.

“I’m a sparkling, I’ll get bigger!” Hot Rod declared proudly, striding further into the room and propping himself at the end of Orion’s berth. “Are you Optimus Prime?”

“No.”

Hot Rod’s disappointment was tangible.

“Where is he then?”

Orion thought about telling the sparkling he was dead, but the awe in his eyes when he thought he was Optimus stopped him. There was still enough of that compassion coding functioning for him to not want to crush this youngling’s hopes and dream so viciously.

“I don’t know. Perhaps still in the Sea.” Was what he decided on. Hot Rod perked up at that.

“You think he’ll come back? Hatchet used to say that I would get to meet him one day, that he had something special to share with me!” His enthusiastic lilt was almost infectious. But the cloud Orion had wrapped himself with, that spoke of reuniting and of bitter life was not so easily pierced._“Wouldn’t it be nice?”_ A rich voice spoke from the deep recesses of his mind. The memory rolled out clear as refined energon and doubly precious.

-

“Wouldn’t it be nice? To have our own to raise?” Megatronus murmured against his audial. Soft and warm his words washed over Orion. He flicked his optics to the group of mechlings, barely a vorn old at most, battling over the rights to stand atop the highest part of the solvent fountain. The square was awash with people. Megatronus’s apartment was high enough on the second floor of the gladiatorial lodge and angled just right that they could curl together at his desk to watch the populace.

“The Hot Spots are cooling, our chances are-,” Orion began.

“Low, I know.” Megatronus sighed softly.

“I would.”

“Hm?”

“I would raise a family with you, once we show the Senate what they’re doing,” Orion promised, sealing it with a kiss. Who knew, perhaps their new Cybertron would be heralded by the awakening of new sparks to be cared for? Orion smiled at the thought. Orion smiled a lot then.

-

Orion hadn’t noticed the fluttering in his spark casing, or the pain, until the Medic was pushing him down onto the berth and desperately trying to stabilise his arresting pulse.

-

He awoke again to Hot Rod. The vividly red and yellow sparkling perched at the end of his berth, watching him earnestly.

“Hey!” He exclaimed upon seeing the mech functioning.

“Hello.” Orion blinked. The soft beeping of the spark monitor beside him picked up as he returned to consciousness. Announcing his return.

“Hot Rod!” The Medic was back.

The interaction that followed told Orion three things. The sparkling was aptly named Hot Rod. He was supposed to be with a tutor at the moment. The medbay was off limits to sparklings, especially ones who “-never bother to run two lines of code together at once”.

With a threat the Medic pushed Hot Rod out. The sparkling gave Orion an enthusiastic wave goodbye, the glint in his eyes promising a return. Orion found he didn’t mind if the sparkling returned. Although the list of things Orion would actively care about was short, so perhaps it wasn’t that noteworthy.

The Medic tried to apologise. Orion stared at him blankly.

“You had a panic attack last night, bad enough to send you into shock, you’re stable now but we’ll have to extend your stay here until we’re sure you won’t have a repeat-” He detailed.

“What did you do with Megatronus?” Orion asked.

The Medic stilled.

“His frame was claimed by next of kin.”

“Who?” Orion hissed, knowing full well there is no mech who could rank higher than him in that regard.

“Soundwave.”

Orion missed the hostility in the Medic’s voice. Soundwave. Good. Soundwave would know. He could trust Soundwave.

“I want to see him.”

“Soundwave?” The Medic said incredulously.

“Yes. Or does the council forbid mecha from seeing their friends when they unlawfully kidnap them?” Orion replied, some vestige of anger spurring the words, despite his monotone.

“The council?” The Medic murmured, optics wide. Orion was bored of this. Bored in a way he wasn’t in the Rust Sea. Their disregard, this mech’s fussing. It was almost enough to spark something, but the suffocating weight of that empty place in his sparkcasing compressed anything that arose into apathy with a few measly veins of distaste.

“I’ll inform him of your request…” The Medic said. The next breem passed in silence, the Medic on the precipice of saying something, but eventually leaving once he ran out of scans to run on the disinterested and compliant Orion.

-

Hot Rod had many questions. Orion found a small wedge of patience within himself, and answered them to his best ability. Sometimes that was with a single word.

“Have you met Optimus Prime?”

“No.”

Others it was a quiet explanation.

“I am an archivist, reading is my function.”

But more oft than not it was silence. Hot Rod didn’t mind and would wait expectantly until he got distracted by another thought and posed a new question or embarked on another anecdote.

It was always in the dead of night. Hot Rod despite his flamboyant colour scheme was adept at creeping. A fact that Orion found himself almost grateful for. Hot Rod didn’t look at him with sad, confused eyes like the Medic. Orion recharged without issue that night, the sparkling lightly sliding out when he saw his new friend’s optics flicker offline. 

-

":Soundwave: Pleased to see Orion Pax:"

“Hello Soundwave,” Orion’s smile was tight but there was something there, a supressed warmth perhaps.

":Inquiry: Purpose of Summons:"

“You’re the only one I trust to tell me what’s going on.” He was blunt, there was no point tip-toeing around it. Not with Soundwave. Not with this. Silence hung heavy in the air.

":Soundwave: Will comply:"

-

Rage filled him. Truly for the first time he was awash with it. Even when he’d first seen the carnage that was the Pits, he had not felt hatred like this. It did not simmer, it vaporised, becoming a super-heated cloud of searing acidity. A vicious anger that tore at his insides just as the creature in the memory file tore at everything he tried to build. He hated him. Optimus Prime was not a hero. He was a monster. Orion hated him. Hated that he had taken over his frame. Had forced his servo to- _No._

Optimus Prime was not Orion Pax.

Megatron was not Megatronus.

These monsters, who had warred until their planet, their people were nothing more than tattered scraps of their former selves, were not the same mecha who had walked into that Senate floor and demanded their rights.

-

Soundwave held Orion softly as the archivist was stretched to the limit. He shook with rage. With grief. And with horror.

The Gladiator turned Spymaster turned Senator knew it was harsh to give Orion the complete truth. The truth that despite their goals the Decepticons had become twisted by war, a far cry from their founding, from the ideals Orion had supported. But the Archivist desired to know, and he deserved to.

-

It took many orns for Orion to finish archiving the information, his processor adept at categorisation. There were many files he was still not ready to look at. The fights. The battles between this Megatron and Optimus Prime. The slaughters the being in his frame had authorised. Those his love had partaken in.

Coming back to himself Orion realised Soundwave looked different. Thinner, it took time for Orion to compute what the difference was. His symbionts.

“Where is Ravage?” He asked, mind speeding down the memory files but finding nothing. Soundwave winced, and it dawned on Orion just how much could be lost in a 4-billion-year war. His placed his servo gently on the gladiator’s -no he was a Senator now- limb, a gentle pulse of his EM field sending the condolences he couldn’t voice. Soundwave’s field responded.

They stayed like that, grieving together. For their loses. For their home and their dreams. For each other.

And somehow it helped. The burden lifted ever so slightly now that they were not the only one grieving. Orion could see why no one else mourned his lover. He had seen what Soundwave had shown him. The brutal unfiltered history was jarring. He could not blame them for seeing his love as a monster.

But Orion and Soundwave were not grieving for Megatron.

They did not mourn a warlord.

They mourned Megatronus, poet, gladiator, conjunx.

-

Hot Rod was back again.

His late night visits were becoming habitual despite the Medic’s banishing. Orion feels he should call him by his name, but in all honestly there are two mechs the former Archivists trusts or cares about these days, and despite all the heroic footage, Ratchet is not one of them.

The sparkling enthusiastically detailing how he’d hidden himself from the Medic for almost a full stellar cycle, however – well Orion would be lying if he said Hot Rod wasn’t a welcome distraction at the least.

“– and then Hatchet said I’d be lucky if a mad mech signed my adoption papers–,”

He still thought of Megatronus. Relived that moment in the Rust Sea again and again, his nightmares conjuring images of him driving that blade into his love’s chest on nights Hot Rod was absent. But he was not so crippled by grief that it was all he thought of anymore. No, Orion Pax thought of the war he’d missed. The millennia he should have been at Megatronus’s side. He could have prevented this. The death. _His _death. The destruction of Cybertron. If only he’d-

“Orion?”

The sparkling’s earnest questioning pulls him out of himself.

“Yes?”

“Are you okay? Hatchet won’t tell me why you’re even here! You look fine!” His arms were almost flailing around as he spoke. Orion paused for a moment. Truly it was only Soundwave’s concern and the aptly re-named Hatchet’s fussing that kept him here. Legally he could leave tomorrow. It…just hadn’t occurred to him to leave.

Orion had always been a mech pushed along by the tide of events, only taking a stand once he’d had something-someone to ground himself with. Yet now he was adrift.

“I am…unwell,” Orion was lucid enough to understand how deeply Megatronus’s death -by his hand- had affected him, and that it wasn’t normal. He wasn’t well. But he had every right to be unwell in light of the fact he woke up from being possessed to find his lover dying in his arms, all but one of his friends dead and his planet destroyed. A mech would have to be insane to walk away from that unaffected. So yes, Orion knew he was unwell, but he didn’t know how to fix it, or if he even wanted to.

Hot Rod took that as his answer with an quiet understanding that only the young held and asked Orion what his favourite energon goodie was.

“I don’t have one.”

That was not a satisfactory answer.

-

Hot Rod had seen Senator Soundwave visit his Orion. Senator Soundwave was an important mech and shouldn’t be bothered according to Hatchet. But Hot Rod had very important business and that meant he needed to talk to this very important mech.

Engaged in quiet conversation with Soundwave, Hatchet didn’t spot Hot Rod until a flame colour servo was tugging on Soundwave’s long digits.

“I have to talk to you,” Hot Rod gave Hatchet a look before turning back to Soundwave, “in secret.”

-

There was such determination in the sparkling’s grip that Soundwave simply inclined his head to Ratchet in parting, and allowed himself to be pulled down the corridor. He noticed the mounting frustration in the medic’s field.

“Inquiry: Purpose of privacy?”

Hot Rod had not let go of his servo and proceeded to look around suspiciously before motioning for Soundwave to lean down. The Senator obliged, bemused.

“Orion said he hasn’t tried energon goodies. I need one of every flavour and three rust sticks.” Hot Rod’s young face, so serious and concerned twisted a part of Soundwave’s chest.

Soundwave nodded seriously, “Operation: Approved.”

Hot Rod lit up, almost literally if the thin flickers of fire form his exhausts were any indication. Soundwave gently extradited himself from the security system as he finished tracing Hot Rod’s movements and discovered his late-night adventures.

“You can’t tell Hatchet, he never lets us have goodies.”

That deathly concern in such a childlike tenor was like a key to a long-neglected lock. Grating at first but then a smooth opening as what was forgotten became familiar. Soundwave offered Hot Rod a thumbs up and set aside the rising memories of that same innocent resolve in another mech. Ravage had been fully grown when they’d- failed to return, but those memories of their younger years were still carefully stored in Soundwave’s core storage. He’d forget his own name before those quiet days when Megatronus was still kind and his cassettes not yet hardened by loss, none of them soldiers.

-

Lazerbeak was undetected as she swooped into the sparkling ward. Occupied by only four recharging figures it was a simple task to locate the one who’d inserted himself into Orion’s life and by extension hers.

She expected him to be loud, to be obnoxious.

She did not expect to be grinned at by an already awake sparkling and ushered through a series of ventilation systems to Orion’s door. Nor did she expect to be pulled inside and sternly informed that Orion had to try each goodie before they could have some, “…but! You can have my rust stick” The sparkling finished.

He turned to the bed and happily presented the box to a wide-eyed Orion.

“I got you goodies so we can figure out your favourite! Your Senator friend helped me sneak them past Hatchet.”

Orion smiled. It was gentle and unassuming like the warmth that blossomed in his frame. Lazerbeak returned with a list of Orion’s preferred treats (unsurprisingly the sickly sweet ones) and a motion capture Soundwave gently stored beside his pre-war memories.


	2. Worth the Effort

Orion was unwell for a long time. Long enough that Hot Rod had doubled in size by the time he was forced to cling to his legs as the archivist made ready to leave. Ratchet, as Orion had learned to call him, moved to shoo the mech but Orion stopped him with a raised hand.

“Can I tell you a secret?” The blue and red mech asked in a hushed tone, kneeling at optic height with Hot Rod. His optics wide, Hot Rod nodded vigorously. Orion straightened and turned to Ratchet, “Would you say I am a ‘mad mech’?” He asked, a cloying smile upturning his faceplates.

Ratchet stumbled for a moment, looking into familiar and unfamiliar optics for some hint as to the answer. Deciding on the truth Ratchet answered; “I wouldn’t call you sane.” The grumbled “-can’t say that about anyone at this point,” went unheard by everyone except Lazerbeak, who heartily agreed. She’d seen the New Senate’s council meetings after all.

Soundwave took that moment to play a soundbyte he’d gotten at the request of Orion several months ago.

Ratchet’s voice, raised and clearly aggravated played clearly from the old spymaster’s speakers, “HOT ROD! At this rate you’ll be lucky if a mad mech would be foolish enough to take you off my servos! Get back here with that nanite spray!!”

Hot Rod was quick. Quick enough to evade Ratchet after ruining another adoption interview, and quick enough to put two and two together.

“You-,” he trailed off hopefully.

“I’ve got the forms ready, you just need to agree.”

Hot Rod’s reaction was instantaneous. His flame red arms were flung around Orion and crushed their plating together. “R-really?” Optic fluid began leaking from the young mech, but he brashly wiped it away.

“Really.” Orion confirmed, tightening his grip on the sparkling.

-

Ratchet and Orion were alone. Soundwave having gone to assist Hot Rod in collecting his things.

“Optimus thought he would be the next Prime,” Ratchet said.

Orion’s head whipped around as he stopped dead in the middle of the hallway. The vehement “No.” was out of his intake before he gave the thought more than a second to process.

“I’m glad you won’t allow it.” Ratchet said.

They walked in silence.

“Optimus was my friend, had I known what the Matrix had done to you, would do to Hot Rod?” Ratchet began softly.

Before, Orion would have cut him off, anger preventing him from caring what the medic _would_ have done, it didn’t matter what he _would _ have done, he hadn’t done it.

Now, Orion knew the medic needed to say it. Needed him to know. Orion wasn’t cruel enough to let him simmer in guilt any longer, he had stopped blaming the medic, it was time Ratchet followed suit.

“I would have taken him and run.” Ratchet finished.

“You did what you thought was right.” Was all Orion offered. All he could. All he would. It was not Orion’s job to absolve the medic. He would have to do that for himself. For now, Orion had a sparkling to show his new habsuite. Orion thought the bright yellow walls would be to Hot Rod’s vibrant and borderline tacky tastes.

-

Soundwave had returned to his own apartment, leaving Orion and Hot Rod alone in their shared accommodation. His vorns under medical supervision had given Orion plenty of time to reflect and learn his history, but it had also been incredibly lonely. Solitude should have been Orion’s friend, as it had in the past. But with his spark physically unstable, desperate for the warmth that had been ripped from it, he found no comfort in silence. Yet his circle of friends had only shrunk since he’d come back online into this strange post-war world.

Mecha looked at him like he was something special, a mystery. Some had even had the audacity to call him the name of that spectre who haunted his most frequent nightmares. No, Orion Pax did not fit into this new world, but he had Soundwave, and -Orion smiled at a suspicious but wholly expected clattering from the second bedroom- he had Hot Rod.

Ratchet had tried and they were building a comradery, slowly but surely as Ratchet’s gruff honesty revealed itself from under the layers of guilt and detachment he’d shown Orion in the past. The most surprising of Orion’s new circle was the menacingly purple Seeker assigned to guard him. Soundwave had insisted upon Slipstream after a “Decepticon Loyalist” had broken in. Although the need for her had ceased in recent years she still joined them for evening energon now and again.

Orion bemusedly moved to stand in Hot Rod’s door frame. Optics penetrating the shadowy room to clearly see the sparkling frozen in the middle of the room a screwdriver in servo and a ventilation shaft cover spinning to a stop on the floor.

“Interesting way to sleep Hot Rod, tell me, what did Soundwave do during the war?” Orion teased, his tone stern but a smile curving his face.

Hot Rod mumbled out a response, optics trained on the ground.

“What was that?” Orion grinned.

“…spied on mecha…”

“Indeed, ones far sneakier than you my light. Berth. Now.”

Too clever for his own good, but clever enough to know when he’s lost, Hot Rod shuffled back to his berth after re-attaching the vent.

“I don’t mean to stifle your sense of adventure my light, but if you want to see that racer friend of yours, you need only ask,” Orion said brushing a servo over his adolescent charge’s helm.

If Hot Rod had been a handful as a sparkling, that propensity for trouble had only doubled with each vorn he got closer to adulthood. Soon he would leave Orion, strike out on his own and knowing his free-spirit end up far far away from his doting carer.

“Really?” Hot Rod asked, leaning up as if to spring from berth.

“Of course, just not now it’s the middle of the night cycle and I haven’t even looked over the background checks Soundwave brought me,”

“Oriooon!” Hot Rod complained to his carer’s amusement.

“Recharge well, my light,” Orion said, taking Hot Rod’s tool kit and the screwdriver from where it was hidden under his berth. Orion knew Hot Rod loved him, but that didn’t mean the archivist thought he’d listen to him.

Lazerbeak won her bet with Orion that night as she tailed Hot Rod in the shimmering lights of New Kaon.

-

Hot Rod was gone. Orion’s apartment was quiet and empty, his sparkling gone off planet in search of adventure and trouble. Orion found the change unsettling, but there was one benefit.

He no longer had to stifle the moans Soundwave drew from him, lest he disturb his sleeping charge. Unfortunately for Hot Rod, Orion was not a sneaky as he thought, and the sparkling had been…viscerally aware of the nature of his relationship with the Kaonite Senator. It was hard to muffle something once it was already shouted. Lazerbeak gifted him noise cancelling headphones one day without explanation and to Hot Rod’s eternal gratefulness.

Unlike his carer, Hot Rod was far sneaker with his trysts and it had taken Orion walking in on them after arriving home a whole breem early to realise Drift was more than a ‘close friend’. A close friend he was now in close quarters with in the middle of space with all supervision far away. Orion tried to not let it eat at him. He liked Drift, he was a nice mech despite being a touch too spiritual for Orion’s anti-Primus tastes. That didn’t mean he wanted to think about-

“Orion.”

Soundwave interrupted his lover’s musings.

“Hot Rod: Safe. Lazerbeak: Watching.”

Orion smiled at his partner, how selfish of him to forget they were both missing their creations. Lazerbeak’s decision to accompany Hot Rod had been the deciding factor in Orion letting the just matured mech out of his sight.

“I know, I still worry. As do you,”

“Suggestion: Distraction?”

The mech’s smile turned mischievous as data cables curled around his middle, drawing him closer until he was flush with Soundwave’s front. The night passed swiftly and when morning broke Orion found himself content. Warm and loved as he had been so long ago.

Orion felt a stirring of melancholy. Perhaps he was selfish for still loving the bright Gladiator, but if death and time had made Orion love Megatronus less, then was it love in the first place?

He loved Hot Rod. He loved Soundwave, Lazerbeak as well.

Yet these loves didn’t soothe the ache in his spark at Megatronus’s absence. A silent tear slid down Orion’s faceplate. Did his love for Megatronus, still oh so bright despite the vorns – the millennia even if he couldn’t recall them – mean his other loves were lesser? Soundwave stirred, perceptive even in slumber, shifting to curl closer to Orion. Warmth flared in his spark, vibrant and unrelenting, alongside the aching sorrow.

Orion’s thoughts stilled.

He could have both.

Who was he to limit himself. Soundwave made him happy as Megatronus had. Their love was different, softer, understanding instead of fierce and steady, but it burned with that same intensity. Orion huffed. He was supposed to have reconciled himself already, yet once more he found himself forced to remember what Ratchet had so vehemently tried to press into his processor.

_“It’s a process Orion, a constant one.”_ The medic had said.

Orion drew in a steadying intake and managed a quiet smile. At the time Orion hadn’t allowed himself to think about it too heavily, still deep in his grief, but it was funny. The medic didn’t realise how close he’d come to quoting Megatronus himself.

_“Orion, liberation, freedom, it won’t end with this,” _Megatronus’s deep tenor had murmured in his audial while they had lain curled together as he and Soundwave now lay thousands of vorns later. If Orion recalled correctly, so most certainly, they’d been discussing that fateful Senate meeting. _“It’s a battle, a constant one. One we cannot afford to give ground in.”_

At the time, Orion had argued that they needed to relent at times. He still believed that even with this new context. Sometimes he had to give ground. To let the pain and the grief wash over him, cover him until he could drown it in. Then rise from it once more, aching and sore but alive.

Orion had begun to appreciate the grief, it reminded him that he had loved and been loved in return so fiercely it left a scar unable to ever fully close over. Orion still wished things had been different, but he had found happiness again, and he couldn’t trade it for what had once been. For then he would mourn what he has now. He was not grateful for the events that lead him here, but he was so achingly glad it was him who got to dote on Hot Rod, to kiss his scrapped knees and hold Soundwave when the senator’s broken bonds consumed him as Orion’s own did him.

He was happy.

Megatronus would have been happy _for _him.

Soundwave’s intakes were soft and rhythmic, Orion allowed himself to be lulled back into recharge. He would face loss again, but if losing Megatronus had taught him anything, it was that love was worth the pain. Even when it crushed your spark and left you hollow.

It was worth the effort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some people...write grief fics...to cope??? lmao I hope you enjoyed it, leave a kudos so I can suck up that sweet sweet validation. 
> 
> This had an alternate ending originally, wherein Hot Rod meets with the Matrix, and well, Hot Rod wakes up with Orion in his arms, but I didn’t have the heart to go through with it because I'm a weak bitch and some endings deserve to be happy.


End file.
